Sunday, June 17, 2007

Papa was/not was



Saturday night, do you know who these guys are/were? Was/Not Was, one of the great conceptual bands of all time. Two Guys, Don and Dave and their brilliant musical buddies, Sir Harry Bowen of the OJays fame and Sweet Pea Atkinson of Ford Production line fame. Don plays great bass and produced some of your favorite albums...Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Cheb Khaled....
Live, these guys were highly explosive, they invented Detroit techno back in the late 70's. I think they are back together again. This is from 1989.

2 comments:

historymike said...

Nice clip. Too often W/NW got tagged as a weird art rock band, when in fact they were funky as hell.

My favorite song of their was "Man vs. the Empire Brain Building."

Never saw them live, though, despite catching almost every decent live show in Detroit from 1980 to 1990.

microdot said...

Man vs. the Empire Brain Building off of the fantastic record "Born to Laugh at Tornadoes" with Mitch Ryder, Ozzie Osbourne and Mel Torme as guest vocalists!
I love the piece, Wedding Bells in Vegas on the next record.
I saw them on Letterman with Frank Sinatra Jr....he was the perfect vocalist for the piece...a cheesey badly reproduced copy of his father!
I'm glad I found someone who shares my enthusiasm for them!
The Other was, David has been working with Ricky Lee Jones.